Shade City is a Mega City. It is a massive urban area which is multi-leveled and contains little if no wilderness. Everything is built up, and resources are managed and controlled by corporations. Food, water, electrcity, housing, its all corporate owned and leased out to individuals who live in the city.Example:

In the city are massive buildings called "Arcologies". These massive buildings tower over all others and are usually corporate owned. In these buildings, people live, work, shop, and enjoy recreation without ever having to leave the safety and comfort of the structure. Example:

Transportation, particularly in the 'downtown core' of Shade City is primarily by means of magnetically propelled trains called 'trams'. These trains move above and below the city in tunnels and rails to provide a fast, efficient means of transportation for most people. There are also buses, shuttles and luxury transports. Taxi type services also exist, however, individual cars in the down town core are strictly regulated. They are more common in the 'suburb' areas, but the cost of owning and operating one is higher than a lot of people can afford. Most people opt for public transportation, simply due to cost and ease of use.Example of a tram car:

Most people work for one of the main corporations or one of their subsidiary companies. Each of the main large companies has many smaller companies that distribute the work of running the city. Each firm is an international megacorporation (megacorp). Which means they pretty much all compete against each other in just about every arena, although some are a little more heavily invested in a particular area than others.

Ashram Inc. - This is the largest of the megacorps that run Shade City and is responsible for the vast majority of its infrastructure, building, and management of resources (power, water, sewer, internet service, cellphone service, etc). Ashram also operates most of the hospitals, transportation, handles construction and owns most of the actual buildings and property in Shade City. No home is truly 'owned'. It is 'leased' from Ashram.

Rook Industries - Rook industries, while it does provide some infrastructure, it is almost all in the form of communications. Primarily Rook Industries is responsible for communications and entertainment. It also has a large hold on image capture technologies, everything from cellphone camera technology to pro movie making equipment. It runs virtually all the movie studios, news networks, cable networks, radio channels, music studios, you name a form of visual or audio communication, they run it either under their own name or a subsidiary. They also offer alternative services in cable, internet service, and cellphone service to Ashram.

Onexia Technologies - Onexia is primarily into manufacturing. If its mass produced, they do it. They have extensive contracts for making just about every product imaginable, but their specialties lie in things like microchips, nanochips and nanotechnology applications for manufacturing specifically for technology. If you get parts for just about anything electronic, chances are they come from Onexia or one of their subsidiaries. Onexia does produce some military technology components as well and manufactures military as well as civilian weapons and parts. Onexia does provide some R&D services, specifically around hardware and product development for larger clients.